A schedule nobody updates is just a hopeful guess. What actually separates projects that finish close to plan from the ones that quietly slip month after month is rarely the quality of the original timeline — it is whether someone is tracking dependencies, catching variances early, and correcting course before small delays compound into missed milestones. This Project Planning and Controls Practitioner training course, delivered by Arab British Fellowship Training Academy, builds that discipline from the ground up: structured project planning, scheduling, progress monitoring, and the control mechanisms that keep delivery honest.

Offered within Project Management Training Courses under the Management category, the programme moves from planning fundamentals into project governance, schedule and cost control, risk and change monitoring, and programme-level coordination, giving participants a working command of project controls as a continuous professional practice rather than a one-off planning exercise.

By the end of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Explain why project controls matter and how they connect planning to actual delivery.
• Build project schedules using structured planning techniques, work breakdown, and dependency mapping.
• Set and defend realistic baselines for scope, schedule, and budget.
• Track progress against approved plans and identify schedule deviations early.
• Apply monitoring and corrective-action techniques when performance drifts off plan.
• Integrate cost, resource, schedule, and progress information into a single control picture.
• Understand the role of project governance in supporting effective control decisions.
• Manage risk, change, and issues without losing control of the schedule or budget.
• Coordinate controls across multiple, interdependent projects within a programme.
• Apply planning and control practices to real scenarios as part of ongoing professional development (CPD).

Target Audience

• Project Managers and Assistant Project Managers
• Project Planners and Schedulers
• Project Controls Professionals
• Programme Managers and Coordinators
• PMO Professionals
• Planning Engineers
• Project Support Officers
• Project Governance Professionals
• Professionals responsible for project monitoring and reporting
• Professionals seeking structured CPD development in project management

Module 1: Why Projects Lose Control

• The gap between a plan and actual delivery
• Core functions of project controls
• Project control roles and responsibilities
• How planning and delivery relate in practice
• Professional development and CPD context

Module 2: Building the Plan — Scope, WBS and Dependencies

• Project objectives and deliverables
• Work breakdown structures
• Activity definition and sequencing
• Identifying dependencies between activities
• Milestones and project baselines
• Resource and activity planning

Module 3: Scheduling and the Critical Path

• Scheduling principles and schedule development
• Activity relationships
• Critical path analysis
• Milestone management and schedule baselines
• Schedule updates and progress monitoring
• Identifying and analysing delays

Module 4: Tracking Performance — Controls, Variance and Forecasting

• Control baselines and the project controls structure
• Cost planning, budget control, and cost-schedule integration
• Resource planning and utilisation
• Progress measurement and variance analysis
• Forecasting techniques and outcomes
• Corrective-action planning

Module 5: Governance and Reporting for Decision-Makers

• Project governance principles and roles
• Decision-making structures
• Project reporting requirements and control documentation
• Management information and governance assurance

Module 6: Managing Risk, Change and Issues Without Losing Control

• Risk identification within project controls
• Risk monitoring and responses
• Change control processes and issue management
• Impact assessment and escalation procedures
• Maintaining control during project changes

Module 7: Scaling Up — Programme-Level Coordination

• Coordinating multiple project schedules
• Interdependencies between projects
• Integrated planning and controls
• Resource coordination across a programme
• Programme-level performance monitoring and delivery forecasting

Module 8: From Technique to Practice — Applying Controls and Sustaining Growth

• Applying planning techniques to practical scenarios
• Schedule, progress, and variance analysis in practice
• Interpreting control information and developing corrective actions
• Improving project reporting and integrating planning with control
• Maintaining professional competence and identifying capability gaps
• Lessons learned and applying CPD to workplace project environments